Health Insurance ?

[Canibul]

No kidding.

Hey, if it's true that 'you are what you eat', and this latest generation of American males has been browbeaten by their mothers and health nuts into eating a lot more turkey and chicken all their lives...

hey, I'm just saying....

[Therapy]

That going out of the country for the care is great till there is a complication.

I have first hand info on several.

Come back home, get a complication, hospitalized, and now nothing is covered - nothing = bankrupt.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by hellosailor

"BTW: 30 pounds, or even 50# overweight isn't obese - it's, errr, just overweight."

Gord, last time I accdientally saw them, there were "standard" medical categories for these in the US. IIRC, "overweight" then "obese" "obese II" and "morbidly obese". I don't recall the dividing lines but 50# overweight is, I'm pretty sure, defined as "obese" 1 or 2 in the US.

Your mileage may vary. (Kilage? Kiloage?)

Methinks you're right.

Pre-Obese (Over-wt) Body Mass Index (BMI) 25.0 - 29.9
Obese Class I BMI 30.0 - 34.9
Obese Class II BMI 35.0 - 39.9
Obese Class III BMI 40.0+

[Brent Swain]

Best health insurance, and the cheapest is stay in shape, don't smoke, don't drink too much , and eat food, not "Food like substances".
A friend ,who was BC's Chief medical officer for several years, said 80% of health problems are caused by inactivity and smoking. Pretty easy to insure yourself for 80% of potential risk . Costs less than not doing it.

[hellosailor]

"Best health insurance, and the cheapest is stay in shape,"
So how does staying in shape protect you against kidney disease, prostate cancer (which all men will get if they live long enough), cataracts, or a host of other degenerative problems? Or MS, Parkinson's, and other diseases?
Eat all the organic food you please, exercise all day every day, you still can't prevent many things that may already be born in your genes or carried by virii and other vectors you can't deal with.

[Brent Swain]

I didn't say you could prevent everything , just 80%, and reduce the odds of more. Read my entire post, before responding.
We got into this life knowing we would never get out alive.

[GordMay]

I don't enjoy agreeing with Brent - but, in this case, he's ABSOLUTELY RIGHT!!!
Of course there's much more to say on the subject; but he's got the basics right (IMO).

[John A]

Originally Posted by Brent Swain

Best health insurance, and the cheapest is stay in shape, don't smoke, don't drink too much , and eat food, not "Food like substances".
A friend ,who was BC's Chief medical officer for several years, said 80% of health problems are caused by inactivity and smoking. Pretty easy to insure yourself for 80% of potential risk . Costs less than not doing it.

True. But..

Healthy Genes and strong heredity charactistics helps too.

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by hellosailor

"Best health insurance, and the cheapest is stay in shape,"
So how does staying in shape protect you against ... prostate cancer (which all men will get if they live long enough),.

Use it or lose it

[hellosailor]

Yeah Gord, but as usual he's changing the subject not responding to it. While the "best" insurance may be a healthy lifestyle, that won't insure you AT ALL from many things. We're talking about health insurance options, not the question of how to take care of yourself.

Heart disease, kidney disease, a variety of cancers, many health problems appear to be genetic or environmental and there's nothing you can do with your lifestyle that is proven to reduce or prevent them from striking you. Sure, you can eat healthy to prevent some types of heart or artery disease. But that's "some" not others.

Prostate cancer is one of the diseases that, to date, all medical literature shows no "cause" for. No healthy lifestyle affects it, and the percent of men who are found to have it simply increases with age. Most men die from other causes never knowing they have it. Others, die from it. In the US and most of the world, your odds of getting it run about 50% AT AGE 50 UP TO 90% AT AGE 90. And if it gets aggressive and spreads outside the prostate capsule, it will kill you without treatment.
No health insurance? That can be a long expensive treatment. Live on manna and distilled water, and that still won't pick up the bills.

Got macular degeneration? Got lupus? MS? Lou Gehrig's disease? Healthy living won't help pay for treatment for any of that, and "alternative medicine" usually just allows the diseases to kill you. As Farah Fawcett sadly found out after saying she was "cured" by it.

According to a WSJ journal article this week, the average cost of health insurance for a single worker in the US is about $5000. That seems to be a deceptive figure, probably the result of averaging the $11,000 that a good plan will cost a single worker with the $2500 that a cheap HMO with small territory and small caps, rather than reflecting whether any plan is really available at $5000 with decent coverage. Cruisers "can't" join most cheap HMOs--they'd have to fly home to get back into their coverage area.

A plan that allows for out-of-area out-of-plan coverage, with no lifetime coverage limit and no daily/incident coverage limit (or at least, realistic ones in 6-7 figures) is going to be damned expensive. But then again, I know someone who has had five years of cancer treatment courtesy of the VA--and you don't want to know what that would have cost him out of pocket.

[Therapy]

Originally Posted by hellosailor

I know someone who has had five years of cancer treatment courtesy of the VA--and you don't want to know what that would have cost him out of pocket.

Off of bit but..........

A while ago I read a retrospective study (no I don't have it) and for most types of cancer (no, I don't have the list), whether you have treatment or not you die on the same day!!! Yep, that is what they said. I am sure you will not find it easily as there is a lot of money and politics in cancer, just like you don't hear what Duesberg says about aids.

[hellosailor]

No question about that. The deeper you look into it, the more you find studies that only raise further questions instead of solid answers. In the US if you are now 50, your life expectancy is now 78-79. The odds of something going wrong along the way...who knows. I haven't trusted any "odds" since Jimmy the Greek died. :-)

[GlobalHopper]

Does anyone have any experience with Travel Assist Network?
They say that for $800 a year they will airlift you back to your local doctor for treatment in the case of a medical emergency. We have seen other people in the transient community selling the services, just always a little skeptical of insurance in general.

~K

MASA is the one people are selling (about $400 a year with limited areas)

[Pelagic]

In the 90’s we used to offer all our yacht crew an optional personal back up to the ship’s liability insurance using IMG International health & travel medical insurance

The Policy was in their name…. so that they could carry it with them if they left our employ and we contributed 50% while they worked for us, so that they could have extended coverage in case of a disease or major trauma that was not work related.

Just an added benefit that allowed them to manage their own health care, but we had a couple of major situations that required extensive health care and IMG looked after those crew very well after we repatriated them.

Not sure if anyone has up to date experience with IMG or if these premiums are attractive, but they seemed geared towards travelers and I have heard, many other super yachts have since followed our example.

International health & travel medical insurance

[hellosailor]

No experience with them, but with any of them you want to check the contract.
Who makes the decision to airlift, to what destination, limited or based on what specific circumstances, by what means (commercial flight? Air ambulance?) and will they cover your companion or escort, either on a basis of medical need or simply on request?

Last year there was a nooze article about a US woman "stuck" in South America, trying to get back to the US. The airlines required her to be flown by stretcher, not seated, so she needed 3 seats, plus a fourth for a medical party to accompany her, because they wouldn't let her fly unaccompanied by medical personnel. With medevac services, get a copy of the contract (a sample of what your policy will be) and look for gotchas between different companies. $ caps or exclusions. And once you've picked one, READ your actual policy to make sure that is the same thing as what they claim to sell you. (Ditto for any insurance, not just medevac.) her husband could afford to either bring her up, or fly down to bring her up, but flying down AND flying back with an attendant AND three seats for her stretcher, just was beyond them.